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According to some Christian cuckoos, Easter decor is totally Satanic. This supposedly all started with goddess Ishtar, proto-Aphrodite Babylonian Venus sex sorceress, whose main lay shepherd god Tammuz died for her love. Guirand issued a slut-shameful warning that the “fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them”, all “animals enslaved by love” but such lady slander majorly derailed from the greater COSMIC nature of cunty career.

Ishtar arrived to Earth an immaculately conceived alien princess and she made her big splash into the Euphrates River in a giant moon egg. An ovulation gift from the Mother Goddess Moon’s 28-day cycle all bright and full in the sky, this tale is one of many expressions of the deep parallels between menstrual cycles and the moon’s cycles in folklore. Above all Ishtar was a divine delivery that just so happened to be born during the first full moon after the Spring Equinox (typically March 20th or 21st when you can make an egg stand on its own due to the planet’s polarity). Eventually there was another Moon Goddess by the name of Eostre in Europe, also connected to dawn and the Eastern Star aka the planet Venus seen in the East before dawn.

Ishtar and Eostre is in close pronunciation to Easter and the egg as a strong fertility symbol (incubating babies, the womb, ovaries, etc) was an emblem for some ancient druids, Iranian New Year Nowruz uses eggs symbolically, deeply rooted in ancient Zoroastrian traditions, and Germanic Pagan Ostara’s similar ritual aesthetic is said to directly influence the Easter baskets and candies that line in the holiday aisle of markets in March. Jesus’s ghost rising from the grave after a brutal corporal punishment is creepy and to me definitely not preferred to fucking like rabbits. I’d rather have spring fever than a crucifixion.

Spring fever is scientific: "Each year at this time, millions of people across the upper half of the Northern Hemisphere begin to feel more energized, upbeat and sexually active, if somewhat distracted." And relating to the estrous cycle ie being in heat: “Estrous (the word) later in Greek times became synonymous with sexual insanity in women. The thought by men at that time was that woman were frenzied, mad and unstable with their sexual desires. Funny, seeing as how modern media depicts men as being the uncontrollable, frenzied sex maniacs ruled by their hormones and women as the being the non-receptive ones annoyed by their advances."

All of this Ishtar/Eostre terminology could be the birthright to the word estrogen. Estrogen is magick as one of my lovely besties Juliet Awry rituals herself: “There is this wild sensation I feel every time I press an Estrogen pill beneath my tongue and feel the little orphic moon dissolve in my saliva. It is as if my veins are filled with pale pink fyres and the crashing whispers of coursing Goddesses. They sing their furious femme sounds from the backs of swan-pulled chariots: Hush, little unrequited body, they sing: *your swelling chest, your hips, your lips. Let softness take it all*. I have never been so alive in all my life.”

Yes, Ishtar and Eostre were sacred sluts, holy whores who liked to fuck, and their association with the magickal qualities of the season crowned them the glittery sexy time Spring Chaos Goddesses poets wrote about in different forms of worship for centuries to come. Who knows which femme mass conspirator governs each day in Spring! It could be Woman Wrath, her blood temp rising, sharpest teeth exposed, kamikaze squirrels darting underneath her chariot wheels, or Duchess Heaven barely in a silk robe embroidered with neon kittens reading Sappho with a pot of pear blossom tea.

From my shiny onyxes, I’m too perplexed by mazes, contrast, lace, the vein on the billowy whitest cloud rolling onward, to know how magick infiltrates my reality by way of greenery, twigs, falcon feathers. The sun radiates over our 3-dim life models, brighter, faster, or interrupted entirely by rain pelting the Playdoh Earth temporarily into wet out-of-shape flux. The structures form, feel out bases, seedlings combust, roots reach. The world attempts permanence, with or without our say. It will change and do as it pleases. And femmes are all in constant flux.

I dream of Spring even tho my allergies are assholes and I tend to get way way horns way way badly. I ache to shed my Miss Mary Quite Contrary and find my own Secret Garden, where Olivia sways on an ivy swathed swing in a goth romantic gown and Juliet, irises tangled in her long golden hair, pens poetry from a mossy tree branch. Near a bubbling brook, Chyna in a sleek dandy suit rambles to birds and squirrels like that forest scene in Sleeping Beauty but somethings more Oscar Wilde witty than “Once Upon a Dream”. I was brainwashed by Disney Princesses. Even if they tended to suffer some hardship via Evil Stepmother or curse, how disappointing to grow and find there is no magick and def no Prince. Or so we think. Or so we lower our dreams to believe. But there might not be a “forever”.

Pastel macaroons, scones with cream, blackberry sage tea, chilled Choya, Tudor style cottages, these are a few of my favorite thing. Every femme needs a list of the little things that make her happy. Consider it an artillery. Amongst us, two Sisters reign. Fauna frolics, she jumps to and fro from makeout sessions in fields, skipping stones, insanity in energy, hyperballad, sugarspun secrets. Flora falls asleep under the starshine, sways in the wind breeze, little tears of dew, perfumed in place, lazy limbs. Flora is a sad girl and Fauna is a party girl, and sometimes they go to each others’ queer dance parties or pity parties, looking for their masc unicorn, if that is the dichotomy they prefer.

Ethereal adjuncts of Cocteau Twins, Grimes, Mozart’s Sister, dreampop and sad girl sonnets felt most appropriate for our Flora Wussy Meow Mix. Fauna is a tad more bassy, a bit more fun, and in her own sad girl moments a slight more feisty, Rihanna and Astra and Japanese funk from years of yore. Happy Super Slutty Sex Goddess to you this Easter! See ya’ll all at Church for Vicki Powell’s Easter Sunday hoedown.

//FAUNA//

\\FLORA\\

Sunni Johnson, arts editor at WUSSY Mag, is an Atlanta musician and zinester.